


plant your hope

by taywen



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Texting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-23 09:39:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13187382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taywen/pseuds/taywen
Summary: Agnieszka is a graduate student, (reluctant) witch and the research assistant of the Dragon.Sarkan just wants to conduct his research in peace. Is that too much to ask?





	plant your hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [athenasdragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenasdragon/gifts).



> written for [athenasdragon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/athenasdragon/) for the Uprooted Holiday Fic Exchange 2017 over at the [uprootedficathon](http://uprootedficathon.tumblr.com/)! I hope you had a happy holiday season!! :D

* * *

> The Dragon
> 
> I trust you did not actually manage to fall into the path of an oncoming train on your morning commute.
> 
> you won’t be rid of me that easily
> 
> D:
> 
> what’s that supposed to mean???
> 
> You asked me to “get with the times” by using “emoticons”.
> 
> that “““emoticon””” means you’re sad
> 
> My mistake. I meant to put the colon first.
> 
> yeah, right
> 
> :D
> 
> STOP

Agnieszka had a moment to realize she was smiling before the abrupt deceleration of the train sliding into the next station sent everyone swaying. Her drowsing neighbour jostled into her and in the scramble to keep her over-full bag from spilling out of her lap, her coffee ended up on the floor instead. And soaked into her sleeve. And all down one side of her pants.

Agnieszka stared down, dismayed. At least her bag and its precious cargo of forgotten books and outdated laptop wasn’t stained; her phone had escaped unscathed too.

“I’m so sorry,” the young woman gasped, all traces of sleep gone from her face and posture as she stared in horror at the mess. She looked so upset that Agnieszka couldn’t even muster any anger, though that may have been a side-effect of the sleep deprivation: she’d barely had two sips of the coffee. “You’re going to the university too, right? I’ll buy you another one,” the woman continued fretfully.

“I think you need it more than me,” Agnieszka said: the dark bags under her eyes were worse than Agnieszka’s. She even managed to smile, to take any potential sting out of the words. The offer was tempting, but she’d already missed the train she usually took and waiting in line with all the other students arriving for or leaving class would have made her unacceptably late. “Don’t worry about it. Really.” She looked at her phone again to forestall any further apologies, and found herself staring at the strange exchange.

Sarkan hadn’t replied since to her last message, which wasn’t unusual; it was his uncharacteristic use of “emoticons” that was weird. The question distracted her through the next two stops, but fortunately her neighbour was wide awake and didn’t fall into her again. Agnieszka disembarked with the rest of the students when they reached the station at the university, the crowd all but carrying her out into the pale sunlight before dispersing to their various destinations.

The further Agnieszka walked from the metro station, the quieter it became as the people heading in the same direction peeled off, until she was the only one following the sidewalk deeper into campus. The wood - it was too large to be considered a copse - rose up before her as the buildings of the university fell away, and above it loomed the tower. Depending on the source, the structure had either been built at the same time as the original castle that would become the university or predated it entirely. It was impossible to discern the truth now: the interiors of the castle and the tower had been renovated so many times since the university’s establishment that little of the original buildings remained. Even portions of the exteriors had been replaced by expensive facades that mimicked the stone construction.

Few people ever came out this far, as evidenced by the poorly-maintained path through the wood. Some of her fellow students thought the trees were creepy, but they reminded Agnieszka of home. Her feet followed the cracked and sunken asphalt by habit, heedless of puddles or mud from the autumn rainstorm yesterday, and led her to the tower’s door. It had obviously been larger once, as evidenced by the arched indent surrounding the entrance, but the original gate had been replaced by a more mundane door. The wood was weathered with age, but it wasn’t as old as the tower itself.

Sarkan greeted her late arrival with his usual unimpressed glare: it lingered on the mud that she’d tracked in (despite wiping her feet on the mat just inside the door) and the still-wet coffee stains (those weren’t her fault) and on— a large leaf somehow caught in the tangle of her hair (that she hadn’t even noticed), but he didn’t actually voice any of the numerous scathing things she knew he’d thought of. Surprisingly tactful of him, all things considered; Agnieszka added that to the list of the day’s odd occurrences.

“I found some books that might be relevant to your thesis,” Agnieszka said by way of greeting, and dug them out of her bag. The stack tipped out of her arm as she made to set it on the edge of his desk; only Sarkan’s quick reflexes saved his colour-coded stationery from utter disarray. He looked torn between intrigue and distaste: the books were old, and not particularly well cared for, all cracked leather and curling binding - the pages of one of the volumes were stained halfway down by something, hopefully water.

“I’ll have a look when I find the time,” Sarkan said, but he only had two classes this semester - mainly because he’d failed the majority of his first year class the previous year and the dean of the magical studies department had restricted him to upper level courses that were only available every other semester. The rest of his time was dedicated to his research, which was something to do with botany, or related to it in some distant way. That had been Solya’s vague explanation when he’d told Agnieszka she’d been assigned as Sarkan’s research assistant at the beginning of the semester.

The point was, Sarkan wasn’t exactly _busy_ , and he spent most of his time at the tower anyway. He was always there when Agnieszka arrived in the morning, and he’d only left before her twice so far; there were no pictures of a family and he never talked about his personal life, assuming he even had one.

Agnieszka resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Do you need anything?”

“You could try to keep a more respectable appearance,” Sarkan said, absently: he was already flipping through one of the books.

Agnieszka did roll her eyes then, and left him to his office.

 

* * *

> Kasia
> 
> how’s your day so far?
> 
> Lizbeta called in sick but the children were promised a visit to the zoo, so a certain uncle and I have taken them to the zoo.
> 
> you?
> 
> oh
> 
> well, a stranger spilled my coffee this morning but that doesn’t seem so bad now
> 
> they’re good kids. Stashek knows not to run off and Marisha isn’t used to the crowds, so she hasn’t let go of my hand.
> 
> notice you didn’t say anything about their uncle
> 
> but I’m glad it’s going ok

The day passed uneventfully. Agnieszka did end up removing the coffee stains with a quick spell, if only because the lingering bitter scent made her crave the coffee even more. There was a small kitchenette with a mini-fridge and a microwave in the back room, along with a kettle for Sarkan’s tea, but he didn’t like coffee and had never seen the point in acquiring a coffeemaker.

She tended to the experiments that Sarkan had deemed her worthy of - only a few, given the clumsiness that still occasionally plagued her, though she’d mostly grown out of it when she’d learned to control her magic - and graded the quizzes from her tutorial, and attended the weekly seminar for magical studies graduate students. Their department covered such a wide variety of topics that none of the handful of others in the course had a thesis in the same area as Agnieszka, but sometimes the seminar offered insight that she’d overlooked.

Sarkan was dozing off in his office when Agnieszka got back from the seminar, his elbow propped on the desk, supporting his cheek with his hand. Agnieszka hadn’t meant to stop, but his (considerably larger) office was on the way to hers. The sight of his head drooping closer to the book open in front of him before he righted himself and focused blearily on the text, only to repeat the process all over again was— weirdly endearing. As if he was more human, fallible and capable of feeling exhaustion (or possibly boredom: she hadn’t had the chance to read the books herself) the same as anyone else.

She ducked out of the doorway when Sarkan lost the battle with gravity, covering her mouth with one hand to stifle her laughter as his forehead hit the book with a solid thunk. Sarkan made a disgruntled noise and his chair scraped against the floor as he—

Agnieszka hurried to her own office - a repurposed storage closet without a window - and forced herself to read the nearest paper on the desk, so that by the time Sarkan’s footsteps stopped before her door, she’d mostly gotten her mirth under control.

“What time is it?” Sarkan demanded, watching narrow-eyed from the door. There was a red mark on his cheek from where he’d rested it against his hand and his hair was a bit mussed; Agnieszka tried not to stare.

“Uh— Twelve o’clock?” Agnieszka guessed. The seminar ended at eleven-thirty, but it was located in a newer building all the way across campus. But why was Sarkan asking her, when he had a (probably expensive) watch on his wrist and likely the phone that she’d pestered him into buying that he now seemed to carry everywhere?

Sarkan nodded and disappeared back down the hall without another word. Agnieszka stared bemused at the empty doorway until she heard the distant sound of the front door slamming. Then she shook her head and pulled out her laptop: her thesis wasn’t going to write itself.

 

* * *

> Kasia
> 
> do they have these at the zoo? https://youtu.be/seaotters
> 
> they hold hands when they sleep, how cute is that??
> 
> not sure. we haven’t made it to the aquatic exhibits yet.
> 
> I hope they do, Marisha and Stashek saw the video and want to see them now.
> 
> oops

 

Agniezka guiltily tucked her phone away when she heard Sarkan return, her thesis writing having devolved into looking up cute animal videos out of boredom. A few swipes on the touchpad revealed that her laptop had actually gone to sleep, she’d left it unattended for so long. She’d managed to close any distracting tabs on her browser and actually open her writing program when a sneeze broke her concentration.

“Bless you!” Agnieszka called.

Sarkan hadn’t been making any detectable noise before that, but the silence that fell now was distinctly chilly and indignant. Agnieszka bit her lip to keep from giggling, the sound of which probably would have carried down the hall to Sarkan’s office with her luck, and focused back on her thesis.

By the time five o’clock rolled around, she’d managed to put down another hundred words or so before giving up, which was something. Something that wasn’t very impressive, but progress nonetheless: the rest of her time was spent reading the worn journal of spells that Sarkan had unearthed for her, not watching cute videos on YouTube. It suited her magic far better than the thick and dusty tomes at her old college. She closed her laptop but left it on her desk, in case Sarkan wanted her to stay later to make up for her tardiness that morning.

Sarkan was actually asleep at his desk when she walked into his office, his head pillowed on one of the books she’d brought in. A different book than the one he’d been falling asleep over earlier.

Agnieszka hesitated just inside the threshold. Sarkan was always scowling about something, which made him look like an old man with a remarkably youthful face, but caught asleep he just looked like a young man, perhaps a couple of years her senior, though he had to be at least a century old. He was obviously tired and it was tempting to leave him there, but then she realized he was— drooling on the book.

She knocked on the door and pretended not to notice when he jerked up, wiping the end of one sleeve furiously over the corner of his mouth. He glared at her, rubbing the side of his neck: probably sore from the angle he’d been slumped at.

“Should I stay later to make up for this morning?” she asked casually; better to act like nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“No, go home.” His voice was rougher than usual, and his corpse-like pallor actually had some colour to it, almost as if—

“Are you sick?” Agnieszka blurted out: everything else made sense when viewed through that lens, even if the thought of such a powerful wizard as the Dragon catching a cold or the flu was almost impossible to imagine.

Sarkan’s shoulders drew up. “ _No_ ,” he said haughtily. “Now go home, I’m tired. Of your questions,” he added sharply, and glared pointedly at her until she did just that.

 

* * *

> Prince Dickhead
> 
> Marisha insisted I take this video and send it to you, so here.
> 
> [video file received]
> 
> Thanks. Sounds like the kids had fun.
> 
> yeah. don’t mention it.
> 
> And how was your day at the zoo?
> 
> I said don’t mention it.

 

Kasia was in a good mood when Agnieszka let herself into their shared flat, which was an encouraging sign. Marisha and Stashek had been grinning in the video, Marisha pointing excitedly to the sea otters in the tank behind them, but neither Marek nor Kasia were visible in the frame. Kasia was humming as she made dinner, though, so spending the day with Marek must not have been too terrible.

“Wasn’t it my turn to make dinner?” Agnieszka asked, dropping into one of the chairs at the table.

“I don’t mind,” Kasia said, which was a nice way of avoiding the fact that Agnieszka’s cooking skills were decidedly lacklustre. There were cantrips to make more impressive meals, but they left a bad taste in Agnieszka’s mouth. She knew it was only her own imagination - Kasia insisted the meals conjured by _lirintalem_ were delicious and she wouldn’t _lie_ \- but she couldn’t enjoy it either.

“I’ll cook tomorrow,” Agnieszka said firmly.

“All right, Nieshka.” Kasia lifted the lid of the pot, leaning around the steam that rose from within, then turned down the heat and joined Agnieszka at the table. “You look tired,” Kasia said, frowning slightly.

“I didn’t get my cup of coffee this morning,” Agnieszka said.

Kasia eyed her for a moment, but all she said was, “Don’t stay up so late watching animal videos tonight.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you’d told me you were going to the zoo.” Agnieszka grinned when Kasia just rolled her eyes.

“We’re not undergrads anymore, Nieshka. You can’t skip class to go to the zoo.”

Agnieszka had skipped more than a few classes at their old university, especially in her first year: she’d been unhappy with her stubborn magic and pining for the valley and the Wood that were the only home she’d ever known. Agnieszka’s magic had been discovered relatively late, and it wasn’t as if she’d burned down the town hall or something, so she’d been allowed to finish her final year of high school before the Polnyan government had sponsored her application to one of the universities that taught magical studies.

The only reason she’d kept her sanity was Kasia, who took what magical theory classes that she could, though the more advanced courses were restricted to those with magic only. Agnieszka was still grateful to her five years later: _Kasia_ hadn’t had to leave the valley, but she’d chosen to do it anyway.

Agnieszka had gone back to Dvernik the first summer, but it wasn’t the same. Even before Agnieszka had to leave, there had been a distance between her and the rest of the town: as if the knowledge of her magic set her apart, though she felt and acted no differently than she had the seventeen years before. That distance had only been more pronounced when Agnieszka came back, and she hadn’t known how to bridge it.

Kasia had elected to stay in their dorm: there was a difference between someone who had to leave their secluded valley and someone who chose to do so. The former was understandable, if regrettable; the latter was almost unheard of. But Kasia had always seemed to chafe at their small town, at the vast wilderness of the Wood that surrounded them, so Agnieszka hadn’t been surprised when her best friend shocked everyone by declaring she was leaving the valley too.

When she returned to school a few months later, it had been with a renewed determination to master her strange magic, which baffled the witches and wizards at Saint Jadwiga College. Father Ballo, her advisor, had been a well-meaning if largely ineffectual teacher, which was more than could be said for the majority of the other members of the magical faculty, and most of what Agnieszka had managed to learn had been self-taught. As soon as she’d earned her bachelor’s degree, she’d applied to Charovnikov University’s graduate program and hadn’t looked back since.

“I wouldn’t skip class,” Agnieszka said, more seriously than the lapsed conversation warranted. “I’m— content, here.” Happy, even, from time to time, which was something she hadn’t been able to imagine a few years ago, alone but for Kasia in a sea of people who had no time for an untrained witch from some country backwater. “Kasia— Are you?”

Academia wasn’t of particular interest to Kasia, though she had earned a degree in history with a minor in magical studies; but she’d never gone back to the valley with Agnieszka, much less on her own, so there’d never been any question of whether Kasia would accompany her to an even more distant city. It was an oversight that Agnieszka had noticed only now.

If Kasia was bothered by the sudden shift in topic, she gave no sign of it; she smiled fondly, still the same brilliant girl that Agnieszka remembered despite the changes living beyond the valley had wrought upon both of them. “You’re just content? I might have to have words with the Dragon.”

“Kasia.” Agnieszka scowled.

Kasia’s smile faded as she considered the question. “I’m good, Nieshka. This isn’t where my seventeen year old self imagined I’d be in five years, but that isn’t a bad thing.” The idea of marrying and settling down by the time she was twenty, as most of the young people in the valley did, had never sat well with her; but winding up the bodyguard of the young scions of an influential family with rumoured ties to the old royal line wasn’t a job anyone would have imagined. “Besides, I got to visit the zoo for free today, which is better than working for someone called the Dragon.”

“Yeah, but you had to go with that asshole,” Agnieszka muttered; Marek was much worse than Sarkan, as far as she was concerned.

“Language,” Kasia laughed. “I can handle Marek.”

Of that, Agnieszka had no doubt, but she would prefer if such a situation never arose in the first place. “I know.”

“So, did you actually work on your thesis at all today?”

“Kasia,” Agnieszka complained, dragging the last syllable out in a whine, half because she didn’t want a reminder of her sad progress and half to make Kasia laugh again.

 

* * *

> The Dragon
> 
> YOU didn’t fall in front of an oncoming train, did you?
> 
> … this will be awkward if you did get into an accident of some kind
> 
> did you actually forget your phone here? you?
> 
> take the day off
> 
> where are you?
> 
> At home. I have an article to finish.
> 
> really.
> 
> I just heard your phone go off again! I know you don’t actually live here

 

Agnieszka shoved her phone into her pocket and looked the laboratory over carefully. The workspace took up the entirety of the second floor, aside from the hallway, or so she’d thought. The area reserved for her research was closer to the door; the rest of the lab was Sarkan’s domain, and she had little reason to venture into it. There was no formal boundary, but Agnieszka had managed to disturb two of Sarkan’s ongoing experiments and actually destroyed a third on her very first day as Sarkan’s research assistant, so she more or less avoided that side of the room as if there had been a physical wall separating them in truth.

Most the newer equipment was situated near the centre of the lab, but older and outdated models were pushed up against the walls. It was a little overwhelming sometimes to realize that Sarkan had used most - if not all - of the machines at one point or another; Agnieszka had only seen a lot of them in old videos. There was a bank of wire-laden consoles reminiscent of modern-day servers in the corner that was possibly a single really, really old computer— and tucked at the end, a door that she’d never noticed before stood ajar. Sarkan’s text alert chimed again from that direction when Agnieszka sent him another message.

“Go away, you infuriating creature,” Sarkan growled when Agnieszka pushed the door open fully, or tried to: his voice was so hoarse she had to strain to hear it.

“I _knew_ you were sick.” Agnieszka ignored his glare and walked into the room, which was only a little larger than her office. Sarkan was laid out on a worn couch that took up most of the space, tucked under a threadbare blanket. A mug stained with tea dregs sat on the end table by his head, next to a fairly revolting pile of used tissues and the empty box from which they’d come.

“If I am sick—”

“ _If_ ,” Agnieszka repeated incredulously.

“—it must be because one of your books had some kind of— contagion!” He promptly ruined the ridiculous accusation by collapsing into a bout of coughing that had Agnieszka wincing in sympathy. She collected the mug while he was curled up hacking and went to get him something warm to drink.

“My books were not infected with some kind of ancient plague,” Agnieszka informed him when she came back with reheated tea. Sarkan didn’t deign to reply to that, instead turning a suspicious eye to the liquid - he always poured out the old pot and brewed another rather than drink the _perfectly good_ , if cold, tea that remained - but apparently his dire straits were enough to overcome his aversion to old leaf water, because he took the mug without protest.

“You’re the one who drinks bean water,” Sarkan muttered once he’d taken a long sip, sounding marginally less like he was about to die.

Agnieszka rolled her eyes. They’d had the coffee versus tea argument many times, and while she definitely had the advantage now in that she wasn’t afflicted by a bad cold, she didn’t want to drive him to a shouting fury; he looked terrible.

“Where did you find those books?” Sarkan asked, stubbornly levering himself into a seated position. “They aren’t from any of the university libraries.”

“Back home,” Agnieszka said. “The library in my town only has a small collection of magical texts, so I’ve read them all. I think I was the first one to open them in years.”

Sarkan frowned, but his phone chimed before he could speak. He dug the latest-model iPhone out and then spent several moments glaring at the screen.

“What is it?” Agnieszka asked at length.

“Solya.” Sarkan said the associate dean’s name the way other people uttered curses.

“You’re not playing that trivia game again, are you?” Sarkan had spent most of the two days after he’d first gotten the phone playing that stupid game - Trivia Crack, or something - with Solya, who always seemed to know the Entertainment and Sports questions, two topics that Sarkan apparently knew little about. As a result, Solya had won more games, which had bothered Sarkan more than he admitted. Agnieszka wouldn’t have thought sports would interest Solya, but it was hard to tell with him.

“No. Words with Friends.”

“Oh my god,” Agnieszka muttered; at least they weren’t spending every spare minute on the game anymore. Then, “So—”

“We’re not friends,” Sarkan said flatly. “He’s insufferable.”

Agnieszka bit back a remark about pots and kettles, which wasn’t quite fair to Sarkan anyway. He was infuriating, but at least he had no trouble telling the truth and didn’t change his position depending on which way the wind was blowing. “Don’t you have a class in half an hour?” she asked instead.

Sarkan groaned and actually made like he was going to get up before Agnieszka pushed him back down with a hand on his shoulder. He was weirdly strong, considering how slender he was, but the way he slumped back with nothing more than a half-hearted glare was just another sign of how under the weather he really was.

“Just cancel it,” Agnieszka said firmly.

“Unlike certain others, I have a set curriculum,” Sarkan snapped. “If I miss one class, my schedule will be—”

Agnieszka shoved the mug of tea at him; he glared at her over the rim as he took another sip, but he hadn’t noticed her taking his phone at the same time. She pulled up his email app, found the contact listing for the upcoming class, and sent a quick message canceling it.

“What are you—” Sarkan snatched the phone back, incensed; his scowl deepened as he read the email. “You didn’t sound like me at all.”

“You’re welcome,” she said pointedly. “Besides, you’d probably just infect them too, and then they’d be behind in all of their classes. Do you really want to ruin their education like that?”

“I probably contracted this damnable cold from one of them,” Sarkan muttered darkly.

“Not my books?” Agnieszka smiled when he glared at her again, but it faded just as quickly when he tried to stand once more. “Where are you going _now_?”

“I need to tend to my research,” Sarkan said stubbornly, pulling up short when Agnieszka stepped to the side to block the doorway.

Agnieszka crossed her arms. “I’m not completely incompetent. I can do— whatever you do with your potions and experiments.” Sarkan only raised an eyebrow, and Agnieszka amended, “Well, the experiments, anyway.” She was hopeless at potion brewing, but it was one of those weirdly specific branches of magic that only a few people ever had a talent for. The only other person that Agnieszka knew of who could brew at a comparable level to Sarkan was the Willow, a world-renowned healer; most people couldn’t brew a potion more complex than milk of fir. Of course, Agnieszka couldn’t even manage such a basic potion as that, but that wasn’t the _point_ —

“You destroyed three years’ worth of work on your first day,” Sarkan said, unimpressed.

“You’re kind of intimidating at first,” Agnieszka tried, but that only made Sarkan draw himself up indignantly. He was on the verge of giving her a piece of his mind when he started coughing again, which proved her point more eloquently than she cared to do at the moment in any case.

“Fine,” he rasped, after he’d collapsed back on the crappy couch and drained half of the tea in one go. The flush of his cheeks made the rest of his face look even paler in comparison, aside from the dark bags under his eyes: he really did look terrible. “I’m aware of how awful I must look, thank you,” he added coolly, his eyes slitting open to glare at her. They seemed to have an almost feverish glint to them, which only added to the overall miserable effect.

“Did you sleep here?” Most of his wardrobe seemed to consist of dark, expensive clothing with only minor variations in shade and style that looked more or less the same to her, but the longer Agnieszka stared, the more she was convinced that he’d been wearing that exact outfit yesterday.

“Yes.” Sarkan looked at his surroundings with a grimace. “I should go home.”

Agnieszka eyed him dubiously. She couldn’t imagine him on the metro, or any other form of public transit; even a taxi seemed beneath him. Maybe a limo, but that didn’t seem quite right either. “You don’t look like you should be driving.”

Sarkan waved a hand dismissively. “Translocation spell.”

Agnieszka frowned: if he was in no state to drive, he shouldn’t be casting workings of that level either; but he was a grown wizard who could make his own decisions. “Is there anything pressing that needs doing around here?” she asked instead.

Sarkan stared at her with an expression that she’d never seen; it was gone before she could properly identify it. “Specimen H-33 needs to be tended. I keep the mixture of water in the second cooler, it’s labeled. And record any observations about its state before and after you administer the mixture.”

“You’re not raising some kind of animal, are you?” Agnieszka asked, trying to keep her instinctive horror out of her voice. The idea of Sarkan tending to anything living and breathing was— weird, to put it mildly.

“Of course not.” Sarkan’s scathing tone was ruined by the rasp of his voice, but his glare was still pretty potent. “H-33 is in the woods behind the tower. There’s no real path, but I imagine that won’t be a problem for you.” He looked down pointedly at Agnieszka’s mud-stained shoes, though she’d wiped her soles on the rug just inside the entrance.

“What is it?” Agnieszka pressed. “Some kind of flower?”

“No. A tree. You’ll know it when you see it.”

A tree. Well, that was better than an animal; he’d even put it in the proper environment, rather than trapping it behind stone and glass in the tower. “All right. I’ll do it after the tutorial today.”

 

* * *

> The Dragon
> 
> A HEART-TREE. You planted a HEART-TREE in the middle of the forest??
> 
> So you can use proper grammar outside of academic writing.
> 
> dont change the subject
> 
> Now you’re just being petty.
> 
> That’s MY line, actually.
> 
> Yes, H-33 is a heart-tree.
> 
> How? Why???
> 
> For my research. Do you even know what I’m writing about?
> 
> Professor Solya just told me it was tangentially related to my own studies.
> 
> Of course he did. :/
> 
> How did you know what H-33 is?

 

Agnieszka scowled at Sarkan’s last reply, then glanced back up at “specimen H-33”: it was a relatively young heart-tree, though that meant little when all of the others she’d seen were centuries old. It was too late in the season for any leaves or sweet golden fruit to remain, but its silvery bark was distinctive enough for her to recognize despite the bare branches and the faintly-shimmering magical barrier that separated the heart-tree from the rest of the forest.

The barrier was Sarkan’s work, of course, complex and layered; different aspects of the working became evident the longer she examined it. Sarkan used magic all the time, to summon a book to his hand or conjure a snack or any other number of mundane tasks that he could achieve nearly as easily by actually doing them himself, but she had witnessed him performing higher workings only a handful of times, and the barrier in front of her was more elaborate than anything she’d seen him do before.

All to keep the heart-tree contained. But for what purpose? Agnieszka stepped forward deliberately, Sarkan’s magic sliding briefly over her as she passed through the barrier. The ground was thick with leaves, from the heart-tree and the other trees of the forest, the foliage piled up against the edges of the barrier: it allowed entry of foreign material, but prevented the matter within its confines from leaving again. The autumn breeze stirred the leaves up, but they hit the edge of the barrier and fluttered back to the earth, starbursts of pale light flickering where they made contact.

Wildlife - mainly the healthy and incautious herd of deer that had free reign of the campus - was deterred from passing through: the barrier would turn solid if they tried, and had a layer of compulsion woven in to suggest the animal find a way around instead. Nothing living was allowed to come in contact with the heart-tree, and if they somehow managed it anyway, they would be unable to exit the barrier.

Without the barrier between them, Agnieszka could feel the heart-tree’s loneliness. She whistled the tune of the old heart-tree close to her house as she drew nearer, pressing her free hand flat against the bark as she poured the water mixture out of the bucket. The trunk shivered beneath her fingers, branches rustling overhead; a hesitant hum answered her, reminiscent of a child trying to mimic a task they’d never attempted before. Agnieszka hummed back the same note, trailing her hand along the bark as she circled the tree, spreading the mixture.

Her phone vibrated again, insistent, but it was only another message from Sarkan that Agniesza didn’t care to answer at the moment. She dropped the empty bucket on the ground and pulled herself into the tree. It was young enough that only the lowest branches could support her weight, but it kept her off the now-wet ground when she settled her back against the sturdy trunk, which was what mattered.

The heart-trees in the Wood were all ancient, miles from the towns at its edge. One of Agnieszka’s earliest memories was of sitting at the foot of a heart-tree, listening to its story: looking back, it was obvious that she’d had magic, but at the time she’d just thought Kasia was too impatient to listen when her friend complained about sitting in the same tree for hours. The heart-trees spent most of their time dreaming, but with careful coaxing they could be roused enough to tell her what they’d seen; Kasia had never been able to get the hang of it.

This heart-tree, half a country away from the Wood, could only vaguely remember the dream of its mother-tree. It had few dreams of its own: the barrier limited its perception of the surrounding area. Its most prominent memories were of the dragon-man that cared for it. It recognized the traces of the dragon-man’s magic on Agnieszka, whom it referred to as “the forest-woman”, and pressed her with eager questions about her own experiences. It was a far cry from the slow, timeworn trees of her home - everything about it reminded her of a child.

Agnieszka shared memories of the other heart-trees she’d met, and of the walkers that could be coaxed out of hiding amongst the trees with ripe fruit, and of long days spent beneath the boughs of the Wood. Of the mountains rising in the distance, and the steady course of the Spindle, and that strange atmosphere that hung over the valley and shaped the people who lived there, obvious only in hindsight.

Her phone rang, the opening chords of “Radioactive” blaring out of her pocket. Agnieszka stared baffled at the screen as the song continued to play: Sarkan was calling her. Kasia must have changed the ring tone for him, as she was the only person that had both access to her phone and the will to mess with her, but that didn’t explain why Sarkan was _calling her_. He had a land line in the tower, so he could have done so even before she pestered him to buy a cell phone, but all communication had been through email even then.

The call ended before Agnieszka could answer it, but it started ringing again almost immediately. She gave herself a mental shake and answered.

“Hello?” She winced even as she said the mundane greeting: she was supposed to be angry at him, not exchanging pleasantries.

“ _Now_ you answer, you aggravating—” Sarkan began coughing, but he at least had the manners to hold the microphone away from his face while he did so.

“Maybe you should just text me,” Agnieszka said, in the moment between Sarkan catching his breath and beginning to snarl at her again.

“I _tried that_.”

“I was busy with the heart-tree.”

Sarkan said nothing for so long that Agnieszka actually checked to make sure the call was still connected. “What do you know about them?”

“You know, the usual,” Agnieszka said, deliberately vague. She slid down from her perch, landing lightly, and gave the heart-tree a final pat before departing. She didn’t want to yell at Sarkan in its presence, it had a weird fondness for him— because he’d tended it diligently for _decades_ , cut off from the rest of the world, for most of its life. The heart-tree didn’t know any different. “Why didn’t you tell me you were researching the Wood?”

“‘The Wood’?” Sarkan repeated, his tone somewhere between skeptical and incensed: how dare she reduce one of Polnya’s most important historical sites to such an unimpressive epithet. That was fair: she, and all of the people that actually lived on the Wood’s edge, didn’t understand the fuss that outsiders gave the Wood either. Then he added, disbelieving, “Are you _from_ the Spindle valley?”

“Born and raised,” Agnieszka said dryly. It felt colder beyond the barrier, the autumn breeze plucking at her hair; after a few futile moments trying to tuck it behind her ear, she gave it up as a bad job: it was probably already tangled beyond salvaging anyway.

“Do you feel any different?” Sarkan demanded.

“No.” Agnieszka frowned, not that Sarkan would have cared even had he been around to see it. “You’re the one acting strangely. Did you take cough medicine or something?”

“Of course not. It just masks the symptoms, which— Enough about that. Don’t distract me,” Sarkan said sharply.

“Maybe you should rest. All of this snarling can’t be good for you.” Her own temper was still rising, but it seemed inappropriate to start shouting at him while he was sick. He needed to be fully aware when she gave him a piece of her mind.

Sarkan exhaled raggedly, a sound of such aggravation that Agnieszka almost felt bad for a second before remembering that she wasn’t the unreasonable one. “You’re not unduly affected by the heart-tree?”

“No?” Before Agnieszka could press him about that weird question, she came out of the trees into the clearing around the tower and saw a group of people standing at the front door.

“Nieshka!” Kasia and the little girl holding her hand waved as Agnieszka hurried over to them.

“Who is that?” Sarkan asked.

“One second,” Agnieszka hissed to him, then in a much warmer tone said, “You weren’t waiting too long, I hope. What are you doing here?”

“We just got here a few minutes ago,” Kasia said easily. “We were supposed to visit Professor Algirdon, but he’s in a meeting.”

“Lizbeta’s sick, so Uncle’s assisting,” Stashek added helpfully in his grave young voice.

That explained Marek’s surly-faced presence at his nephew’s side. There was a particularly bitter rivalry between the two brothers, one Marek was largely losing as a seemingly unambitious reservist next to the educated heir apparent Sigmund. Kasia had mentioned that Sigmund was planning to follow their father into politics, but if Marek had any such political leanings, they weren’t obvious. Apparently there was also a rift between Marek and his father that stemmed from either the latter’s acrimonious divorce or Marek’s decision to enlist in the military as soon as he was of age; Kasia had been a bit hazy on the details when she was telling Agnieszka, but didn’t care enough to clarify.

It had exhausted Agnieszka just to listen. Those kinds of grudges made little sense to her, much less between family members, and learning of them had only lowered her opinion of Marek even further.

“And where were you?” Marek asked, deceptively mild.

She’d left the empty bucket back by the heart-tree, which was just as well: she didn’t want to tell Marek about anything that she’d recently learned. “I was—”

“—is that Solya’s boy toy?” Sarkan interrupted; she’d almost forgotten he was still on the line.

“Solya’s—” Agnieszka stared blankly at Marek, caught on the wrongness of hearing Sarkan utter the phrase _boy toy_ and the idea of Marek and Solya being involved at all. She didn’t want to know that much about the personal lives of anyone, much less the associate dean of their department or the brother of Kasia’s employer.

Marek frowned at her. “Who are you talking to?” he demanded, stepping closer.

“That’s definitely him,” Sarkan said, incensed. “What’s his name? Marek? Why is he there.”

“I have to go.” Agnieszka hung up and shoved her phone in her pocket. “Sorry, one of my classmates was asking about a missed class.” The lie sat awkwardly on her tongue, but she couldn’t very well tell him what Sarkan had _said_. She forced a smile, ignoring Kasia’s worried look for the moment; she’d tell her everything when she had the chance. “Should we go get coffee while you’re waiting for Professor Algirdon?”

A muscle in Marek’s jaw clenched at the mention of his brother, but Stashek and Marisha were enthused at the prospect of sweet pastries, and the adults looked like they could use the caffeine, so they wound up heading to the nearest coffee shop in the end.

 

* * *

> The Dragon
> 
> Solya wasn’t there, was he?
> 
> You didn’t show him H-33, surely.
> 
> he wasn’t. and I wouldn’t have shown him even if he had been here.
> 
> do you know who Marek is??
> 
> Solya’s latest fling.
> 
> I DON’T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THAT.
> 
> he’s Marek Algirdon
> 
> … Algirdon.
> 
> yeah. as in, brother of Professor Sigmund Algirdon. as in, younger son of Minister Kasimir Algirdon. do I need to mention that the Algirdon family is one of the most generous patrons of CU?
> 
> Well, this explains why Solya is consistently chosen for funding and other perks.
> 
> please stop
> 
> Very well. What were your impressions of H-33?

 

Sarkan was already at the tower when Agnieszka arrived the next morning. She hadn’t bothered to respond to his last message the evening before, but she hadn’t anticipated that he would be so tenacious as to show up sick to demand answers, though she probably should have.

Not that he asked her anything; he didn’t even bother to offer her a greeting before subjecting her to a deluge of spells - diagnostic and sight and a few others that she didn’t recognize - that she bore in glowering silence.

“Satisfied?” she demanded when the last spell had faded and the warmth of his magic slipped back beneath his skin.

Sarkan frowned at her. He looked a little better, in that his pale face could be attributed to lack of sunlight rather than sickness, and the fevered, glassy look had faded from his eyes. If anything, working all of that magic had invigorated him. “Not remotely,” he said, because of course he wouldn’t be. “H-33—”

“—the heart-tree,” Agnieszka said flatly.

“—is dangerous,” Sarkan snapped, his voice rising. He coughed once, but that was all the concession he gave to his cold. “Do you know what those heart-trees are capable of?”

“Considering I lived in the shadow of the Wood for most of my life? I’m no titled wizard, but I _have_ shared the dreams of countless heart-trees, so if either of us could be considered an expert, it wouldn’t be you!”

Sarkan was gaping at her, in a way he hadn’t since she’d easily performed a number of spells from the worn journal he’d all but thrown at her in a fit of pique over her unruly magic.

“Where did you get the heart-tree, anyway?” Agnieszka demanded. The Wood was home to a number of indigenous species that only thrived in the valley, which was part of the reason why it was considered one of Polnya’s most important heritage sites: heart-trees would not grow anywhere else (or so she’d thought) and walkers taken from the Wood invariably died within a few years.

Sarkan turned on his heel, stalking down the hall to his office; he’d been waiting to ambush her in the front hall. Agnieszka followed him, her ire rising, but she found him pulling on a long coat, bafflingly.

“A seed fell into the hood of my jacket when I was on a tour and I didn’t notice until afterward,” Sarkan said without looking at her, which was such a blatant lie that Agnieszka barely kept from gaping at him in turn. The guides took small groups of tourists deep enough into the Wood to see certain old and impressive heart-trees, that much was true, but people weren’t allowed close to the trees themselves. They weren’t cordoned off from the world by _magical barriers_ but the guides kept the groups under a sharp eye and guarded the heart-trees closely: there was no way Sarkan could have gotten close enough to one for even a leaf to _accidentally_ fall onto him.

The parts of the Wood that Agnieszka (and Kasia, following gamely behind her) had explored in her youth were off the official paths: not all of the heart-trees were stately and impressive enough for people from beyond the valley to stare at, but those forgotten trees were often undisturbed and had stronger memories of the past, which was the main draw for Agnieszka. In hindsight, the ease with which she had dodged the park authorities was probably due to her magic.

Besides which, heart-trees bore fruit, and there was no way he could have missed an entire heart-tree fruit falling into his hood even if he somehow had managed to wander close enough in the first place.

“Where are you going?” Agnieszka asked, bewildered, when Sarkan gestured impatiently for her to move out of the doorway.

“To— the heart-tree,” he said, obviously biting back that insulting designation he’d been using. “You’re no more of a lunatic than usual, so contact with the heart-tree has had no lasting inimical effects upon you.”

“You’re the lunatic,” Agnieszka muttered, hurrying to keep pace with him: he had already pushed the front door open. “What did you think the heart-tree would do to me?” she added when she caught up with him at the edge of the trees behind the tower.

“Surely you’ve heard the stories of the Wood.” Sarkan’s impatient tone matched his swift steps as he stalked through the forest. “They’re not just stories, but even those with magic have forgotten or willfully overlook the obvious truth. Like Solya. He believes attempting to prove that those legends have basis in fact is a waste of time.”

“So you thought the heart-tree would corrupt me?” It made about as much sense as Sarkan stealing fruit from the Wood to grow a tree half a country away from the valley, which was to say: not at all.

Sarkan was scowling darkly at the forest before them when Agnieszka glanced at his face. “It was a possibility. Your behaviour was— more irrational than usual.”

“If that’s your way of saying you were worried, it sucks,” Agnieszka informed him.

Sarkan bristled. “I wasn’t _worried_.” He seemed on the verge of going on, but bit back whatever he meant to say as they emerged into the clearing around the heart-tree. He walked right up to the edge of the barrier and turned to her. “Would you,” he said stiffly, “show me how you share dreams with the heart-tree?”

Agnieszka stared.

“I would credit you in my article, of course,” Sarkan continued stiltedly, as if he thought that was her actual issue with the very idea. “Assuming anything useful comes of the endeavour—”

“I’ll show you on one condition,” Agnieszka interrupted.

Sarkan’s eyes narrowed. “And that is?”

“You take down this barrier.”

Sarkan glanced at the barrier with a scowl. “Very well,” he said at last. “After you’ve demonstrated how to share dreams with the heart-tree.”

It was a decent compromise - once Agnieszka proved that the heart-tree wasn’t dangerous, Sarkan would have no reason to maintain the barrier in any case - but agreeing felt too close to conceding, especially when Agnieszka knew she was right.

“Fine,” she said, and stepped through the barrier.

The heart-tree’s branches rustled loudly as she approached, too much for the light breeze coming through the forest, and beneath that she could hear the heart-tree humming the tune she’d taught it the day before. The sound wasn’t actually audible, as far as she could tell: Kasia had never been able to hear the songs of the heart-trees in the Wood. When she glanced back at Sarkan, he stood just inside the barrier with his head tilted, a slight frown on his face.

“What are you doing?” Sarkan demanded as Agnieszka pulled herself back up to yesterday’s perch.

“It’s easier to listen if you touch the heart-tree,” Agnieszka explained, making herself comfortable. She raised her eyebrows when Sarkan only looked at her and after a moment he came warily closer. He halted at the foot of the heart-tree, stripping off one glove to lay his bare hand against the smooth silver bark.

“Now what?”

It was strange to look down on him; he looked— strange, almost out of place, beyond the walls of the tower. Thin sunlight shone through the clouds, so different from the fluorescent overhead lights or conjured illumination. The slight flush in his cheeks was probably from the chill in the air, or possibly his cold.

Agnieszka dragged her eyes away and looked unseeing at the heart-tree. It thrummed with emotion, so palpable that she barely had to focus to feel it: ignoring it would have been more difficult. “Just— listen.”

“Your inane humming is all I can hear,” Sarkan said, but though the words themselves were sharp, his tone was not.

She hadn’t even realized she was humming along with the heart-tree. “Well, try humming too.”

Sarkan’s brow creased again, but he turned his attention back to the tree and a beat later he started to hum as well. But as soon as he began, Agnieszka could tell it was wrong: he wasn’t trying to match the heart-tree at all, and the discordance jarred her rhythm badly.

“No, stop.” Agnieszka dropped back to the ground, though she managed to misjudge and landed nearly on top of Sarkan; he stepped back smoothly, saving them both. “Sorry. Listen— can’t you hear the heart-tree?”

“ _No_ ,” Sarkan snapped.

 

* * *

> Kasia
> 
> your boss has contacts in law enforcement, right?
> 
> you weren’t arrested, were you???
> 
> NIESHKA
> 
> ofc not
> 
> stealing a heart-tree is illegal tho, isn’t it?
> 
> you would’ve told me if you’d stolen a heart-tree. there’s no way you could have kept it a secret this long
> 
> /I/ didn’t steal it, Kasia!
> 
> but hypothetically… if someone annoying that I knew had stolen one… could your boss get me in touch with people who could deal with that
> 
> how would you even steal something like that
> 
> what am I saying, they must’ve been a wizard, so. magic. obviously.
> 
> the how isn’t important right now, please focus
> 
> yes. hypothetically, Alosha knows people.
> 
> ok thank you. I’ll keep you updated
> 
> can’t wait
> 
> but why was your first thought that I’d been arrested????

 

The next ten minutes passed in increasing irritation: Sarkan could perceive the outward signs of the heart-tree’s engagement but was completely unaware of its inherent magic; they’d progressed to shouting at each other (and stunning the heart-tree into appalled stillness) before Agnieszka sang out a few words in pure frustration: if Sarkan couldn’t hear the heart-tree, she’d have to _demonstrate_ until he learned to listen properly.

Only after the words flowed off her tongue did she realize they were the opening line of _Luthe’s Summoning_. She startled and halted, and the rising magic collapsed at once: she’d only cast the complex working once in its entirety, and the nature of the spell was such that the caster couldn’t recall the words after they’d been spoken in any case. But that had been the opening of the _Summoning_ , she was certain of it.

“Why did you stop?”

Agnieszka flinched: she’d nearly forgotten Sarkan’s presence entirely. He was staring narrow-eyed up at the heart-tree.

“It was working,” he said slowly. “I heard something. Or— I felt it.” His mouth twisted: he preferred cold rationality and reasoning to the imprecision of difficult to explain feelings. “Cast the spell again.”

“No,” Agnieszka blurted out, more sharply than she intended.

Sarkan turned to frown at her. “Why on earth not?” he asked, as if she were being unreasonable. Maybe she was. But she had decided not to cast the _Summoning_ after the first time, not that she meant to explain such a thing to him. He shook his head, irritated, when she made no reply, and repeated the words himself: but as with his earlier attempt to mimic the heart-tree, it was all wrong. He recited the syllables with a crisp enunciation, as if reading the lyrics of a song rather than singing them; when nothing happened, he grew only more irritated.

“Professor Solya’s mentioned spells of shared perception,” Agnieszka tried. “I’ll look into those. I’m sure you’re just too stubborn to listen, but once you hear it—”

Sarkan made an impatient, dismissive sound. “That wasn’t a mere perception spell; that was a higher level working. I wasn’t aware you had the inclination for such things.”

“Thanks,” Agnieszka muttered, rolling her eyes.

“Oh, don’t be obtuse,” Sarkan snapped. “You have the power, but you lack the motivation: you hardly ever use your magic, even though it would make your life far easier. Why wouldn’t I be surprised?”

Agnieszka looked away. “Well, I couldn’t cast that spell alone even if I wanted to.” She had the tome - Ballo had furtively given it to her after the graduation ceremony; apparently there had been talk of destroying it - but she didn’t think she had the power to cast it by herself; she certainly didn’t have the will, which was equally as important.

“Fine. We can cast it together.”

Agnieszka opened her mouth to deny him, but some small, mostly ignored part of her did want to cast the _Summoning_ again. “You don’t even know what the spell is,” she said instead, but the protest sounded half-hearted even to her own ears.

Sarkan raised an eyebrow. “What is its name, then?”

“ _Luthe’s Summoning_ ,” Agnieszka admitted.

Sarkan stared for several moments. “That working has only been successfully cast once in recent—”

Agnieszka grimaced and ducked her head, so the collar of her jacket hid the lower part of her face. The _Summoning_ had been her final project, and she’d cast it with Father Ballo. It had been a thoroughly unpleasant experience, forcing her magic to fit into the rigid, brittle frame of Ballo’s, and its success had revealed a few things about the senior faculty that she would have preferred not to know. But they’d had to award her her degree in the end, embarrassment aside: there was no pretending she wasn’t a capable witch in her own right after that, even if Ballo had been part of the working too. Ballo was fair and honest; Agnieszka had been the one to drive the working forward, and he had given her the credit she was due.

The scandals that had come out afterward hadn’t hurt, but she knew that Ballo would never have tried to claim credit even if the outcome had not been so damaging.

“What on earth did the _Summoning_ reveal about the faculty at that puritanical college?” Sarkan asked.

He was curious, but nothing more. Of course, it was far more difficult to gauge a person’s intent and sincerity without the cold light of the _Summoning_ , but Agnieszka could tell when someone wanted to know something for the sake of it and when they had ulterior motives. News of her success had spread through the small magical college, and into the larger magical community in general afterward, though her name had been kept out of it. Solya’s eyes had glinted when he inquired about the identity of the caster during her admission interview, though Agnieszka had only shrugged and said she knew them a little.

“Nothing.” The lie was even more obvious than usual, but she had no interest in airing anyone’s dirty laundry. It had only been the same petty grievances that afflicted most people.

Sarkan scoffed. “It must have been embarrassing: half the faculty has left or was dismissed since you graduated.” His amusement faded after a moment; Agnieszka bit her lip and firmly tamped down on the impulse to walk away as he stared at her. “I won’t tell anyone, Agnieszka,” he said gravely.

“Thanks,” she muttered again, relieved and annoyed by her relief all at once.

“I would still like to cast the working, should you be willing,” Sarkan said. “I correspond with Ballo occasionally— he told me some of what it entails. No mention of you, of course.” His irritation was obviously directed at Ballo this time, but Agnieszka was only grateful that Ballo had kept his word about leaving her identity anonymous.

“All right,” Agnieszka said. She crouched to pick up a fallen branch, bending the twigs into an approximate shape before transmuting it into a makeshift podium.

Sarkan was staring at her in some confusion; his eyes only widened when she pulled the tome of the _Summoning_ out of its pocket dimension with a muttered word. For all the trouble it had caused, _Luthe’s Summoning_ gave her strange comfort and she usually carried it with her. The spell itself wasn’t the problem, really; it was what it could reveal that was so worrying. And if it did go badly, at least the only other witness would be the heart-tree.

“Father Ballo and I read the words together,” Agnieszka said, arranging the book carefully on the surface to avoid looking at Sarkan. The fluttering of her stomach was a strange mixture of anticipation and nerves; impossible to say which was stronger. “Don’t worry about trying to sound exactly the same.” Ballo had despaired over her inconsistent pronunciation throughout her tutelage, but she’d found that intent mattered more than precision in most cases; it was certainly true of the _Summoning_.

Sarkan just looked at her hand when she held it out to him: he seemed truly uncertain for the first time, as if the thought of mingling magic was somehow less objectionable than holding her hand. It somehow wasn’t a surprising reaction, though it was rather depressing; Agnieszka pushed those thoughts away when Sarkan took her hand. His fingers were warm despite the temperature, almost feverish, and his grip tightened in tandem with her own as she instinctively curled her chilled fingers around his.

Agnieszka cleared her throat and began to read; Sarkan picked up the thread a moment later, his initial uncertainty melting away as they slipped into the _Summoning_ together. Everything else faded away: her awareness of the chill, the tug of the breeze, even the sounds of the forest around them.

The difference between casting with Ballo and Sarkan was immediately apparent: it was almost as if she and Sarkan were creating an entirely different working. Where Ballo had been unyielding, Sarkan was willing to bend. When Agnieszka lingered on one word or another, repeating it or changing a syllable, Sarkan faltered for only a moment before continuing his recitation. Their magic flowed together naturally, unhindered by any fear of the unknown: the pages of the spell seemed to flash by as the light of the _Summoning_ grew brighter and brighter.

Sarkan’s words had taken on a musical quality by the time they reached the end of the working: it was as much song as spell, a perfect blend of their magic that Agnieszka couldn’t say which portions had come from her and which were Sarkan’s doing. Sarkan closed the tome gently, the soft sound a final note to their working.

It was only then that Agnieszka looked up; she could see Sarkan doing the same out of the corner of her eye.

The _Summoning_ -light filled the clearing, eclipsing the weak sunlight and illuminating the heart-tree fully: the steady pulse of its magic shone brightly - closer to Agnieszka’s than Sarkan’s, but still wholly different - and its song resonated around them.

And as she looked, Agnieszka saw not only the heart-tree as it was, but also as it had been: a small seedling straining for light beneath the canopy of its mother-tree. The Wood was an ancient forest, its trees tall and strong: life was difficult for a seedling just starting out. It had put down its taproot on the far side of the mother-tree, mostly hidden from view of the infrequent tour groups, not that it paid much attention to the humans that occasionally passed through.

But then the dragon-man came. Beside her, Sarkan drew in a startled breath as they watched his younger self slip away from the rest of the group. He’d come prepared, of course: there was a small pot already filled with soil from the Wood, and containers of Spindle-water, and he had the seedling transplanted in a matter of minutes. Agnieszka couldn’t say how long ago that was: the heart-tree was established now, so a few decades at least, but Sarkan looked largely unchanged from the dragon-man in the seedling’s memory.

The seedling hadn’t liked the forest behind the tower at first, but the dragon-man tended it diligently. There was a ready supply of water from the Spindle to supplement the natural rainfall, and fertilizer mixed with soil from the Wood every spring, and the barrier kept out the worst of the cold in even the bitterest winter. When a particularly harmful species of beetle afflicted it one year, the dragon-man came with his blazing magic to eradicate the pests. Seasons and years blended together as the seedling flourished into the heart-tree that stood before them today.

The light was fading slowly and the memories of the past went with it, until all they could see was the heart-tree. Its excitement was tangible; its trunk seemed to bend toward them, bare branches reaching out. Agnieszka laughed and lifted her free hand to brush against a low-hanging twig.

Sarkan twisted around beside her; with their magic still bound together, she could feel everything as he swiftly dismantled the barrier. It had been a complex working, though not on the same level as the still-fading _Summoning_ : but she could feel the enjoyment of the challenge crafting such a working had given him, as well as his regret for closing the heart-tree away with it.

He turned back to the heart-tree as the barrier fell away, a lingering sense of satisfaction nearly palpable around them. She could still feel Sarkan’s thrill of discovery: a hunger for new magic and knowledge that had sustained him for over a century. And beneath it, the same uncomplicated joy of casting such a satisfying working as the _Summoning_ that Agnieszka felt.

The final light of the working slipped away and took the last of their lingering magic with it, but the connection between them remained strong: Agnieszka still clutched Sarkan’s hand in her own, and his grip was just as tight.

They turned to each other as one. Sarkan had never smiled like that before, so open and content. She moved before the thought could fully form, bracing her free hand on his shoulder so she could lean up to press her mouth to his: she wanted only to taste his smile. Sarkan made a startled sound but he got the idea soon enough; his other arm curled around her waist as he pulled her closer. His lips were slightly chapped but they parted for her readily; he was impossibly warm, and sweet.

It was impossible to say how long they stood there, exchanging heated kisses in the middle of the forest until at last Agnieszka shivered as her magic slipped away from Sarkan’s. Awareness of the world around them returned in the same stroke and they stepped back as one, magic settled firmly inside their separate skins. Sarkan untangled his hand from Agnieszka’s hair; she stuffed her hands into her pockets, conscious of the chill in the air.

Her face was warm despite the breeze whistling through the forest; she swiped her tongue over her lower lip and looked back at the heart-tree. If she kept staring at Sarkan’s dark eyes and flushed cheeks and wind-tousled hair, she would probably do something— inadvisable.

“I can’t believe you stole a tree from the Wood,” she said.

“As I’ve said, the seed fell into my hood when I visited the Wood,” Sarkan insisted, as if they hadn’t both just seen the truth.

“Sure,” Agnieszka said. “It’s a World Heritage site, you know.”

“I’m aware,” Sarkan said stiffly; he was staring broodingly at the heart-tree when she glanced sidelong at him.

“I expected better from you, Sarkan.”

He made an exasperated sound and turned to glare at her, though he got distracted somewhere around her mouth and Agnieszka couldn’t even be smug about it because she was staring at his lips too, remembering them pressed against her own—

“We should go back,” Sarkan said abruptly and spun on his heel to do just that.

“So you can record everything you learned about the heart-tree?” Agnieszka asked mildly, but she couldn’t contain her grin when Sarkan just looked uncomprehending at her over his shoulder.

“Yes. That,” Sarkan said stiffly after a moment, and stalked away without another word.

Agnieszka bit her lip to stifle the giddy laughter threatening to escape and glanced back at the heart-tree once more. It was just as jubilant as she was, albeit for different reasons; its branches swayed and creaked as it stretched beyond the confines of the now-dispelled barrier. She gazed up at it for a few minutes longer, but without the warmth that Sarkan’s magic naturally emanated, the chill of the air was impossible to ignore.

Sarkan would have made it to the tower by now, shut up in his office or in that shabby overnight room in the laboratory. He could have the rest of the day to brood, Agnieszka had her tutorial and her usual duties to deal with in any case, and then— Well, she’d see how things unfolded.

Humming under her breath, Agnieszka started back to the tower.

**Author's Note:**

> (& bonus!)
>
>> Agnieszka
>> 
>> I still can’t believe you stole a member of an endangered species from a national park
>> 
>> its 3 in the morning
>> 
>> well, I just coughed so hard I woke myself up. obviously you infected me
>> 
>> so I’m not sorry for waking you
>> 
>> you better not have fallen back asleep
>> 
>> I know there’s a dragon emoji on here somewhere, just wait
>> 
>> you’re fired
>> 
>> expelled
>> 
>> fired??? I quit.
>> 
>> ha.
>> 
>> Get some rest, Agnieszka. Drink some tea; I think we can both agree that it’s better for a sore throat than that coffee you’re always drinking. I’ll see you in a few days.
>> 
>> yeah. hope you’re feeling better too.
> 
> Sarkan frowned at the screen; the back light was far too bright for the hour, but that was not the reason for his unease. It had been more than ten minutes since Agnieszka’s last reply: the impossible woman could very well have fallen back asleep, a feat that he knew was beyond him for the time being. The reminder of that ill-advised kiss and every incredible thing that had led up to it had temporarily arrested him: it was only her continued messages that had forced him from his memories, and now that she’d fallen silent, he found himself contemplating the day’s events once more.
> 
> He hesitated, staring at the short reply he’d typed but not yet sent, then put his phone on silent without sending it and rolled over in his bed. Ridiculous, that a single kiss shared in the heat of the moment had him even considering— It had to be the late hour, and the blasted cold, affecting his judgment.
> 
> In the morning, he would awaken and find the damning emoticon sitting in his messages, waiting to be sent. He’d curse himself for a fool and delete the crude emoticon (less than three, how ridiculous), and tell himself he looked forward to a few days of peace in the tower. If he found himself missing Agnieszka’s presence, it would only be because she was a valuable resource for his thesis; nothing more.


End file.
